The CHANEL Whisperer

MATTHIEU BLAZY has given NEW LIFE to the 116-year-old HOUSE built on the RADICAL NOTION that GLAMOUR grounded in REALITY can make you FEEL something SPLENDID

- Story by BROOKE BOBB

Who is CHANEL for?

The lady who lunches in a tweed jacket? The K-pop idol who loves a double-C logo? The rich mom with her quilted flap bag? Certainly, it's for the few who can afford it and for those who want to telegraph an association with the brand that epitomizes the highest echelon of chic. But Matthieu Blazy, Chanel's artistic director, sees things more expansively.

“I thought that the Chanel aesthetic was somehow overshadowing the idea of women,” Blazy says. “It was one woman, but I see many, many women.”

He is telling me this from a corner of Chanel's couture salon at 31 Rue Cambon, the one with the famous mirrored staircase where Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel used to stage her fashion shows and watch them, secretly, from the top steps.

It's an unseasonably warm but typically gray February day in Paris, a few weeks before the Fall 2026 Chanel show. In anticipation of Blazy's arrival, a reverential silence blankets the room. “He will be down in five and a half minutes,” a publicist says. On the wall behind me hangs a large black-and-white portrait of Mlle Chanel, her face turned to the side. She gazes down at me discerningly, even a little intimidatingly. I feel acutely aware that I am in the spiritual presence of one of fashion's most important legacies, waiting for the person now tasked with carrying it forward.

When Blazy bounds down the stairs, the austere hush dissipates. He's dressed casually, in a quarter-zip sweater and navy trousers. “It's almost like a uniform,” he says. We're seated across from each other in cushy ivory armchairs, cordoned off by pastel-colored screens. “The atelier has the white coats. I wear this one.”